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St John's PigFAIL 2010

Last Friday, 16 of London's finest female foodies descended on St John Restaurant, Smithfields, to take part in Ladies' PigFest 2010. It's been a life-long dream of mine to ravage a whole wild boar Obelix style, so this was one step closer to fulfilling that dream - for our group of girls were about to dine on suckling pig.

Kill the pig, cut his throat, bash him in ...

Our pre-booked, pre-paid piggy feast was composed as follows:

Ladies' PigFest 2010

Roast Bone Marrow & Parsley SaladWhole Crab & Mayonnaise

Whole Roast Suckling Pig, Potatoes & Greens

Eccles Cake & Lancashire CheeseSpotted Dick & Custard

Sounds bloody brilliant, doesn't it? We gathered beforehand at Smithfield Tavern for a drink, but spurned their enticing scotch eggs and sausage rolls in anticipation of the ensuing piggery. I'd made badges and A Scot in London brought crowns - what could possibly go wrong?

It was my very first time at St John's, but I'd longed to go for ages. I mean, Fergus Henderson is the doyen of nose-to-tail eating and I can think of nothing finer - I'd even bothered recreating his most infamous recipe (the bone marrow) at home. That very morning, Tim Hayward, Guardian writer, had announced that Henderson be given a Nobel Prize for food, so my excitement was palpable.

You want your first time to be special, right? Well, on entering the restaurant, we walked slap-bang into a heaving crowd of braying youths. A bad start - I immediately felt overwhelmed and unwelcome.

Fighting our way through, we were shown to the stark private dining room where the staff brought us wine, water, bread and butter and then left us there.

For fifty minutes.

So we got raucous. With our hats and our badges, we looked like a typical hen party anyway, so if they were going to ignore us, we might us well live up to it.

The bone marrow was velvety goodness, and the parsley salad pleasingly zingy (although honestly I think mine was better), but the serving was a tad parsimonious, especially considering bones and parsley cost eff all. More heinous was the dearth of toast - there wasn't even enough for one slice each - I resorted to sucking the marrow off my spoon.

The crab though - what flavour, what texture! The white meat was sweet and briney, and the creamy brown meat so brimming with umami it reminded me of sea urchin. I ended up scraping the shell to retrieve as much as possible.

Of course, these were just the warm-ups, we were there for the headlining pig. And so we waited.

We asked for more water and wine to tide us over, but maddeningly these did not come till we asked twice again.

Finally, finally the star of the show appeared. By then we were (a) starving again and (b) over-excited, so you can't blame us for rushing to pap the pig.

Listen to me cackling

The waiter decapitated the beast and put its head on a platter, and naturally we all wanted a shot of this Salome-esque sight. One of us asked the waiter if he would pose with the dish and we primed our cameras, only for him to stick his arm out as far away from his body as he could stretch it and to sigh so audibly it made me flinch. He then tersely announced "You are all scaring me. I will not serve this till you all sit down".

I think that, and the sigh, was the straw that broke this camel's back - being kept waiting was bad enough, but actually being made to feel like we were an irritation felt like a slap in the face.

So after a few more snaps, I sat down, piggy ardour completely quelled.

We passed the pig's head around for some adoration, and then began to tuck in, but frankly my heart wasn't in it any more.

Sure, the pork was delicious - moist and sweet - and I knew I should have been enjoying it, but by that point the massive pauses between courses and the surliness of the waiter meant that I was more interested in the (frankly fabulous) company than the food.

I would like to give special mention to the greens, which had been steamed so perfectly it cheered me up a bit. The beautifully lacquered pig skin was far from crackling though, and chewing on it made me feel like Chaplin in The Gold Rush.

Anyway, despite everyone having a good old try, a glut of porcine flesh was left over, so I ran off and asked the one friendly waitress to doggy-bag it for us and at least she smilingly said she'd oblige.

I guess you're wondering how the pudding was. Well, I have absolutely no idea.

For by then it was almost quarter to eleven, so I (and several others) actually had to leave before it was served, so as not to miss our last trains home.

As I rushed out, the general manager stopped me and apologised. This threw me a little, partly because I thought he'd been oblivious to our existence, but mainly because he resembled Jonathan Pryce so strongly the theme tune for Brazil popped into my head. I nodded distrait, and barely made my connection, and when I got home I was still hungry.

I'm pleased to say that St John has kindly offered dessert and champagne to all sixteen of us to make up for the problems we experienced. I think we'll be taking them up on the offer in March. Stay tuned ...

Nicely written, my dear friend.We should have made the waiter wear the hat and do us a little dance - Now, I'm pretty sure that would have cheered him up (or us, but we were the customers so who cares about HIS mood?!)

I still think about the juicy meat of the pig, though, and drool a little...

Such a shame that St Johns didn't deliver. Im suprised actually because everyone rates them so highly, and it couldn't have been a worse move for them PR wise to upset a massive crowd of food bloggers with bad service and surly waiters.

it was an amazing dinner and congratulation for the organisation. Despite some issues with the service, the food was fab' and well done to have managed to gather all these ladies around one pig. Such a lucky man!

Oh no! Well at least the company was exceptional - you all looked like you had a swell time despite the grumpy waiter and the slow service. The few times I've been to St. John I've eaten well and the service was fine, so it's a real shame you ladies didn't receive the excellent treatment you deserved...

Oh no that's such a shame.If they can't cope with parties on Friday nights then they shouldn't book them in. It sounds like the food was pretty good and the company great but doesn't sound like St John did well in service terms. If service takes that long on a busy evening they should for warn you so you can choose.

So sad that it was not as good as it should have been. What a bunch of idiots. Food Urchin has it right. They know that a room full of blokes is likely to be lot more demonstrative about their displeasure and the attitude seems to me to be sexist in the worst possible way.

There really is no excuse for bad service and it is not only bad manners but simple plain commercial suicide. I would give them a chance at restitution before coming to a final decision, but if no sensible recompense was available, there's no doubt that I would never go there again.

I went to St John's for the first time on Friday for lunch (lovely Welsh Rarebit) and was really looking forward to having a proper meal there with a pal. Really liked the feel of the place, but now I'm not sure whether to press on or sack it off.

I have been to St John a few times before Pigfest and I absolutely love it - although service has been a little "crisp" in the past too at times. I must admit, I was enjoying my wine and the chatter so much during the (loooong) wait, and the food was so divine, that even the insanely long wait did not put too much of a dampener on my evening. However, I might not be saying that if I had missed out on the puds!

Aw. :( That makes me really sad. You were all so excited. When I was a waitress I loved happy, bubbly customers. What a horrible man, especially since a lot of people would have been throwing major strops at the length of time it took for the pre-ordered food to come out.

(Even if there was some issue in the kitchen, they should at least offer some kind of explanation/warning up front. Pretty basic customer service.)

Right I'm putting on my loose cannon hat and quite rightly so if I may. There were obviously two twerps mentioned on this post, first the waiter and then Little Lord Falteroy for suggesting Fergus H. be bestowed a Nobel accolade for food, meh. As for the latter, if it was suggested by someone less gushing in their usual writing like Fort or Gill, then I just might kowtow and mutter praise be.

That ain't no suckling pig, it's a blooming teenager! If any of you wish to taste a real baby then you'll need to head down to Chinatown during weekends or Fino (thank you Su-Lin and for indeed I've tried and enjoyed) or, or, or save your pennies and come here instead.

I'm not sure but get impression duty manager finally figured out there was a problem from some of the tweets made during meal on being kept waiting and waiting and waiting.

He annoyed heck out of me when he said, he'd been aware through evening that we'd experienced some problems but they were busy so he'd not had chance to come over. Well, hang on a second, unless the entire restaurant was full of punters having problems, surely the most important task for a manager to be doing is handling those who are??? Not waiting until 10.40 pm to come over and say something! SHEESH!

Very interesting. Shame St Johns weren't on form that night. I wonder why? I wonder if it was in fact that you were a roomful of women? Did anybody get any explanation?Bizarre especially considering that everythingbut knows one of the chefs there!But may I also ask why eating vat loads of meat has become a feminist issue?I am split here:On the one hand I must admit, the idea of women gorging on pig flesh is rather offputting... (in cannibalist societies humans are known as 'long pig' for we taste so similar).Remember girls, eating meat makes you sweat and smell nasty.On the other, eating is a feminist issue...'nice' women eat like birds a la Scarlett O 'Hara. We are exhorted to curb our apetites/ambitions and the slimming industry can also be considered an attempt to physically make women 'take up less space'.But I feel it's a pity that, especially considering the damage that meat eating does to the environment, this liberation from 'seemly' ladylike eating patterns has taken the form of excessive meat feasts.

@theundergroundrestaurant - Hi MML! We got the slightly weird explanation that apparently they'd been swamped by confused punters who'd meant to go to St John the pub and also that the waiter had thought one of our party was still eating crab and so he was waiting for us to finish the starters before he brought out the pig (doesn't explain why the starters were late though).

Meat becoming a feminist issue in this case is I think purely because a couple of guys on twitter were completely taking the mick out of a bunch of us girls mentioning we liked steak.